My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Her brief glance summed him up. He was short, stocky and bald and he had an unpleasant, slightly fat, aggressive face. He was like a sneer in human form.

Everyone in violent crime liked a good funeral; you never knew when yours might be. There was also the added plus that it wasn’t you who was in the box. One day it would be, but not today.

Fredericks had the kind of mouth that held a perpetual sneer, as if there were some kind of specialist curling tongs that he used on his lips on a nightly basis.

His GP had told him to stop smoking, but so far he’d stopped buying cigarettes and just smoked other people’s. He was amazed at the money he was saving.

My Review:

Book three of this absorbing and highly active series found no flagging in quality as it is holding strong in intrigue, complexity, and oddly compelling and curiously peculiar characters. Alex Coombs is a diabolically skilled and agile storyteller with a wicked keen vocabulary and uncommonly adept command of language. His word skills and phrasing pack a deadly punch and kept my curiosity on edge and my brain itching for the next puzzle piece to emerge. I am fatally awestruck and a total devotee of his inimitable, controversial, and indomitable DCI Hanlon.